EDITORIAL: Gilligan's life was example of service

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It's a word that is repeated in nearly every reminiscence of the former Ohio governor, who died Monday at the age of 92 at his home in Clifton.

Gilligan was a public servant who believed that government had a role to play in improving lives. His career is an example we should look to in this era of gridlock, sequesters and government by crisis.

What better example of his service is there than Gilligan, at the age of 78, a former governor and congressman, running for Cincinnati school board in 2000? He served eight years, finally stepping down because, as he told The Enquirer in 2007, "I'm going to be 87 years old."

Gilligan practiced a lifelong commitment to education, mental health reform and the power of good government to help those who need it. He was an unabashed liberal, a witty, redheaded, Irish Catholic drawn into politics as a way to serve others and make his community better.

He served with distinction in combat in World War II, earning the prestigious Silver Star in the battle of Okinawa.

As governor, he had the courage to push for a state income tax and then to campaign vigorously to keep it during a referendum challenge.

It was a campaign that may have cut short his ascension in politics. Although he had been mentioned as a possible vice presidential, even presidential candidate, he lost his bid to be re-elected governor in 1974 to Jim Rhodes. It was the only Republican victory over a major Democrat incumbent anywhere in the country in that Watergate year.

A once-promising political career may have been cut short, but Gilligan's service did not end there. He was appointed by President Jimmy Carter to lead the Agency for International Development, which oversees aid to foreign countries. There, he changed its emphasis from building roads and dams - whose benefits, he said, "went only to the elite" - to feeding the rural poor and curbing population growth.

He returned to his alma mater, the University of Notre Dame, and directed the school's Institute for International Peace Studies.

At the end of his single term as governor in January 1975, Gilligan reflected on what he accomplished in his four years of service as governor: "We were able to demonstrate we could make life a little better for the poor, the elderly, the racial minorities, the mentally ill and retarded without any great sacrifice of our living standards."

Certainly, we could benefit from more thinking like this - agreeing to a bit of shared sacrifice to benefit a greater good - in a time when society's safety nets keep getting cut.

In that same interview, on his last day in the governor's office, Gilligan said Ohio had moved toward becoming a more just and compassionate place under his administration, "especially for those at the lower end of the scale."

"And that, as I understand it," he went on, "is what government is all about."